Meaning And Examples Of The Common Defense Mechanisms

Check on these common personality defense mechanisms with it instances. These mechanisms are usually found in person with personality disorder.

Acting Out

Conflicts are converted enthusiastically, with next to zero interceding reflection.

Example: A student disrupts class since she is irate over an unjustifiable grade.

Denial

Refusal to recognize some agonizing external or subjective reality evident to others.

Example: A woman declines to recognize a pregnancy, regardless of positive test.

Devaluation

Ascribing unrealistic negative qualities to self or others, as a methods for rebuffing the self or diminishing the effect of the depreciated item.

Example: The formerly appreciated professor who gives you a D on your termpaper is all of a sudden reprimanded as a horrible teacher.

Displacement

Conflicts are uprooted from a threatening object onto a less threatening one.

Example: A student who abhors his history professor sets the textbook on fire.

Dissociation

Conflict is managed by disrupting the mix of memory, consciousness, or perception of the internal and external world.

Example: After breaking up with a sweetheart, a suicidal student is all of a sudden unfit to review the timeframes amid which they were as one.

Fantasy

Avoidance of conflict by making imaginary situations that fulfill desires.

Example: A student from a troubled home fantasies about setting off for college to end up plainly a well known psychologist.

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Idealization

Ascribing unrealistic positive qualities to self or others.

Example: A student stressed over intellectual capacity starts to idolize a mentor.

Isolation of Affect

Conflict is defused by isolating ideas from affects, subsequently holding an awareness of intellectual or factual viewpoints yet putting some distance between threatening emotions.

Example: A biology student gives up a laboratory animal, without stressing over its right to existence, personal satisfaction.

Omnipotence

An image of oneself as extraordinarily intense, insightful, or superior is made to defeat threatening outcomes or feelings.

Example: A student confronting a troublesome final exam affirms that there is nothing about the material that he doesn't have an inkling.

Projection

Unsuitable emotions or personal qualities are abandoned by crediting them to others.

Example: A student ascribes his own outrage to the professor, and consequently comes to consider himself to be an abused victim.

Projective Identification

Offensive feelings and reactions are projected onto others, as well as held in awareness and viewed as a reaction to the beneficiary's behavior.

Example: A student credits her own outrage to the professor, yet observes her reaction as a legitimate reaction to oppression.

Rationalization

A clarification for behavior is developed afterward to legitimize one's actions in the eyes of self or others.

Example: A professor who accidentally makes an unthinkable exam declares the need of stunning students back to genuine investigation.

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Reaction Formation

Unsatisfactory thoughts or impulses are contained by embracing a position that communicates the direct opposite.

Example: A student who loathes some group of persons composes an article protesting their unjustifiable treatment by the university.

Repression

Forbidden thoughts and wishes are withheld from conscious awareness.

Example: A student's jealous desire to kill an adversary is denied access to conscious awareness.

Splitting

Opposite qualities of a single object are held separated, left in purposely unintegrated opposition, bringing about cycles of idealization and devaluation as either extraordinary is projected onto self as well as other people.

Examples: A student wavers amongst love and scorn for a professor, sometimes considering her to be canny and effective and himself as unmindful and frail, and afterward exchanging parts, contingent upon their interactions.

Sublimation

Inadmissible emotions are defused by being diverted into socially adequate behavior.

Example: A professor who feels a mystery disturb for teaching rather works perpetually industriously to win the teaching award.

Undoing

Endeavors to rid oneself of guilt through behavior that compensates the harmed party actually or symbolically.

Example: A professor who plans a test that is excessively troublesome makes an overabundance of simple additional credit assignments.

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References:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defence_mechanisms
https://psychcentral.com/lib/15-common-defense-mechanisms/
Personality Disorders in Modern Life, Theordore Millon